The Secret Ingredient of Wishes

by Susan Bishop Crispell

  IwishCatchdidn’thavecancer.

  When she finally opened her eyes, she had to blink against the bright sun. It took her a moment to realize Ashe was standing on his back deck watching her. He smiled, raised a hand in greeting. She smiled, but stayed focused on her wish. On Catch.

  Rachel thought it one more time. Clear and strong, it filled her mind.

  I. Wish. Catch. Didn’t. Have. Cancer.

  33

  The quilted pie carrier slung on Rachel’s arm dug deep lines into her skin. She walked toward Ashe’s house like a kid being forced to bum a cup of sugar from the neighbors. Head down, she held her breath as she passed the remnants of the plum tree. Dead leaves and bits of bark crunched under her shoes.

  She’d taken the bandages off her hands. The red wounds on her palms throbbed, but at least they were less noticeable than the bulky wraps that made her hands useless.

  “A pretty girl and a pie. What did I do to deserve this?”

  Rachel’s head snapped up. Ashe waited at the top of the steps, leaning on the railing. She wondered if he’d been watching her the whole time. Barefoot and in a wrinkled gray tee and jeans, he looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. His easy smile caused a pang in her heart.

  Taking a deep breath to steady her voice, she said, “Mandatory socializing.”

  “For you or me?”

  “Both, I think.” Rachel tried her best to smile. “Between your dad’s extracurricular activities and your divorce, Catch is pretty worried about you.”

  He shrugged, but the pain in his eyes gave him away. “I’ll be fine. Like I’ve said, neither are a big surprise.”

  “Doesn’t mean they hurt any less.”

  “True,” Ashe conceded. Then he walked back to the door, leaned inside, and said, “Got a pie delivery out here. Bring utensils!”

  Rachel stopped a few feet from the steps. Tightening her fingers around the pie carrier’s handles, she winced as the force sent pain through her still-healing palms. But at least it gave her something besides her brother to concentrate on. She closed her eyes as it traveled up her arms. The sun shone red behind her eyelids.

  When she opened them, she swayed on the uneven grass, light-headed. Ashe was already down the stairs and a few feet from her before she realized he was there. His gentle hands stroked her arms, her hair. She blinked at him. “I just got dizzy for a second. I’m fine.” She brushed the hair back from her face and exhaled a long, steadying breath.

  He slipped the handles of the bag down her arm, careful not to touch her injured hand, and trailed his fingers over the red grooves on her skin from the weight of the pie pulling on the straps. He led her to the lounge chair on the deck. The sun-soaked fabric warmed the backs of her knees and the tops of her calves where they pressed against the cushion. She settled in deeper, the warmth comforting.

  Setting the pie down on the far end of the cushion, Ashe sat on the chaise opposite her. He cupped her knees, splaying his fingers to cover as much of her skin as possible. He rubbed his thumbs back and forth.

  “What’s going on with you?” He ducked his head to meet her eyes. “You’ve been acting strange since the market. And then that thing with the plum tree. Please tell me what’s wrong. Maybe I can help.”

  How could she tell him Catch was dying or his brother wasn’t really who he thought he was? How could she tell him that despite all of it, she still wanted him to want her?

  “There’s nothing you can do, Ashe.” She looked down at her lap to avoid his stare. “But thanks.”

  Scott came out, a roll of paper towels tucked under his arm, plates and silverware clutched in one hand and a six-pack in the other. Lucy bounded out after him and headed for Rachel.

  Ashe let out a sharp whistle and the dog froze. “Get the door, Lucy,” he said.

  The dog trotted back to the door, hopped onto her hind legs, and pushed the door with her front paws. It closed on the first try. Ashe left one hand on Rachel’s leg when he removed the pie from the carrier and broke off a piece of crust. He tossed it, and Lucy snatched it out of the air. When he snapped his fingers, she lay down at the foot of the chair.

  “Hey, how’re the hands?” Scott asked her, setting the paper towels down.

  “A little better,” Rachel said. “Thanks.” She watched Scott while he unstacked the plates and set them on the empty half of Ashe’s chaise, wondering if she would ever get used to the shock of seeing him alive and grown. She leaned forward and wrapped a pinky around Ashe’s thumb.

  Scott popped the caps off of three beers and set them on the small table between the two chairs. He sat next to Rachel, stretching his arms out behind him on the cushion. Narrowing his eyes at Ashe, he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you take this long to cut into a pie. You sick?”

  “Delivery girl’s a little distracting,” Ashe said. But he let go of her leg and reached for the knife.

  “I can go back inside if you want.” Scott smirked at his brother.

  “No,” Rachel said. As much as seeing him confused her and brought the sadness to the surface, she hated the thought of him leaving more. “You should stay. You’re not interrupting anything.”

  Ashe shrugged at his brother. He ripped off paper towels and then cut three slices of pie. The raspberry sauce dripped onto the deck. Lucy’s claws scratched at the wood as she inched closer and licked at the red spots.

  Rachel set her plate on her knees. Gripping the fork loosely to keep her cuts on her hands from reopening, she dug the tines in and broke off a small bite.

  Ashe and Scott ate their pieces in four bites each. They both saved a small chunk of crust, which they threw in the air for Lucy.

  “So, Ashe told me you want to be a vet. Is that what you’ve always wanted to do?” Rachel asked Scott.

  “Pretty much. Our dad’s never really been a fan of pets so we didn’t have any growing up, but I always knew I wanted to work with animals,” Scott said. Catching Ashe’s eyes, he smiled. “I snuck out of the house once to go check on the neighbor’s dog that had been hit by a car the week before. Mama didn’t know about it, obviously, or I wouldn’t have been sneaking out, and she went around closing all the windows and locking the doors because a storm was coming. When I came home I couldn’t get in and had to stay outside in the pouring rain because there was no way I was waking her up to tell her what I’d done.”

  Ashe laughed, tapping the tines of his empty fork against his lips. “Poor kid was curled up on the porch swing, soaked through to his underwear when I found him. He was sick for two weeks after that with pneumonia.”

  Rachel could see him there, tucked into a ball with his Transformers T-shirt clinging to his little body and his dark hair dripping onto his forehead. The bone-deep recognition sent a chill through her body. She rubbed at her arms to tease some warmth back in. She jolted when Ashe laid a hand on her arm.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah. That just reminded me of something similar that happened with my brother,” she said. She leaned her elbows on her knees for support and concentrated on keeping her plate from shaking. “Did your mom find out?”

  “Nah,” Scott said, eying the pie dish. “Ashe covered for me.”

  “Scott even gave me his favorite Ninja Turtle figurine as a thank-you,” Ashe said.

  “Michelangelo,” Rachel said without thinking. She’d found the orange-masked turtle abandoned under her bed after Michael disappeared. It was the only thing of his that had remained in the house for reasons she still didn’t fully understand. Perhaps because he had given it to her, so it was technically no longer his.

  Ashe stared at her. “What did you say?” He straightened, not moving his eyes from hers.

  “Michelangelo was Michael’s favorite, you know, because of the name,” she said, her voice shaky.

  “You’re not going to tell me he gave you his figurine too, are you?” Ashe asked.

  “Is Michael your brother?” Scott asked, saving her from answering Ashe.<
br />
  She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

  Ashe squeezed her leg to get her to look at him. When she did, his look of concern nearly made her tell him everything right then and there. She shook her head, just a hint of movement to tell him to let it go for now, and brushed her fingers over the back of his hand. She exhaled slowly when he smiled at her.

  Scott held out his plate to Ashe for another piece of pie. “Run it off later?”

  “Definitely,” Ashe said, carving out two more slices. He transferred one to Scott’s plate, then he dished himself the other piece. With a quick glance at Rachel’s plate—and her barely touched pie—he set the knife down again.

  “What? We like pie,” Scott said, seeing Rachel’s face, the fork halfway to his mouth.

  She laughed. “Obviously. I just didn’t expect you two to be so much alike,” she said before she could stop herself.

  “Why’s that?” Ashe asked.

  “He’s not—” She paused to think of something else to say that wasn’t He’s not your brother. Instead she took a small bite of her pie, adding, “He’s not here much.”

  “That’s only been the past few years. He’s had his whole life to try and emulate me.”

  Scott snorted. “Emulate, my ass.” He took a swig of beer and rolled his eyes. “We’ve always been like this. Hell, Ashe’s name was my first word.”

  Rachel’s stomach twisted. No it wasn’t. My name was. She swallowed the words down, grateful neither of them noticed her reaction.

  “Technically your first word was ‘ass,’” Ashe said, laughing.

  He knocked his knee against Scott’s. Scott slapped his leg away.

  “Well, I was trying to say ‘Ashe.’ Not my fault ‘sh’ is hard to pronounce when you’re little.”

  “So is ‘ch,’” Rachel said. She nudged a raspberry around her plate with her fork. “Michael said my name first too, but the best he could do was Ray. Even when he was older he only called me Rachel if he was mad at me.”

  “Why didn’t I think of that?” Scott said. His eyes were bright, mischievous, when he looked at her. Much more like Ashe’s than Rachel would have thought.

  She blinked and the resemblance vanished, as if she’d imagined it.

  “Start now and you’ll have to find a new place to stay,” Ashe warned.

  “Catch would take me in. And then Rachel and I could sit around plotting ways to get back at you for being a jerk.” He winked at her.

  Rachel smiled in response, hoping neither one of them could see how much effort it took to keep her real emotions locked inside. But the more time she spent around Scott, the more she worried she wouldn’t be able to keep this secret for much longer.

  * * *

  Rachel walked into the kitchen the next morning just as Catch was heading to the back door. She called out her name and Catch’s head snapped up, locking her eyes on Rachel’s. The sagging purple skin under Catch’s eyes seemed to grow darker, heavier by the second.

  She’s not getting better. Why didn’t the wish work?

  She shifted under Catch’s annoyed gaze. “Not baking this morning?” Rachel asked, noticing the clean counters and lack of pie baking in the oven.

  “Not yet. I’ve got some things to do first,” Catch said. She shook her keys for emphasis as her other hand remained on the doorknob.

  “Were you heading to the store? I can go for you if you want, save you the trip. Just tell me what you need.” And save me from seeing Ashe or Scott if they come over for breakfast.

  Catch pursed her lips and grumbled something under her breath. Then she said in a more normal tone, “If you must know, Miss-Asks-Too-Many-Questions, I’m going to the doctor.”

  “Oh,” Rachel said. She tapped her fingers on the cool counter in time with her heart, which sped up at the word “doctor.” “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “I most certainly do not. But if you insist on being helpful, you can stay here and make a few pies for me to take over to Elixir when I get back this afternoon.”

  “Must be pretty important if it’s going to take all morning.”

  Catch gripped the doorknob harder, twisting it back and forth without pulling the door open. “Just some tests to check the progress and make sure nothing’s spreading. Now you get to work on those pies and stop worrying about me, got it?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rachel said, though she wouldn’t stop worrying about Catch. At least not until the wish came true.

  She waved bye to Catch, then stood in the kitchen for a few minutes, forcing the events of the past few days to the back of her mind. Then she gathered the ingredients and utensils she needed and started baking.

  When the back door opened a while later, Rachel had the potato chip crust for a salted chocolate tart cooling on the counter and a pastry crust for a chess pie underway. She opened her mouth, ready to ask Catch how things had gone, but the words evaporated when Ashe stepped inside.

  “Hey,” he said. His mouth pulled down in concern, causing lines to form at the corners of his lips.

  “Hey, Ashe.” Nerves broke free of the calm she’d managed to hold on to since Catch left and rioted in her stomach. She turned her attention back to the dough.

  “Still upset about whatever was nagging at you yesterday?” When she pressed her knuckles harder into the dough but didn’t respond, he continued, “Yeah, I noticed something was wrong even though you were pretending like it wasn’t.”

  She should’ve known he wouldn’t let it go. And she couldn’t be mad at him for it because it meant he cared enough to check up on her. Sighing, she said, “I’ve just got a lot on my mind. I’ll be okay.”

  “Anything I can do to help?” Ashe stood next to her, ducking his head to make her look at him, and settled his hand on her lower back. The tips of his fingers found skin where her shirt rode up beneath the apron she wore.

  “Nope,” she said and pressed her hips into the counter to keep from leaning back into him and the comfort he offered.

  “C’mon, Rachel. You don’t have to deal with it all on your own. Whatever this is, you can talk to me. You know that, right?”

  Rachel rolled the ball of dough to the far side of the counter and rubbed her hands so flour and bits of dried dough flaked off and rained onto the floor. “I can’t tell you this, Ashe.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because once I say it, you can’t unknow it. And it will change everything.”

  Ashe’s hand slid from her back, but he didn’t move away. “Is it Catch?” A mix of fear and frustration at being kept in the dark turned his voice hard.

  Rachel hesitated, chewing on her lip. Until she knew if her wish worked, she couldn’t tell him about the cancer. Even then, she’d probably still keep it from him if Catch asked her to. “No,” she finally said.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Ashe, please drop it.”

  “I can’t.” He stepped around her and dropped onto the stool on the other side of the counter. His fingers tapped impatiently on the granite. “You’re upset about something and it’s making things weird between us. I would really like to put a stop to both.”

  “Why do you have to be so nice? This would be so much easier if I didn’t care if I hurt you.” She mumbled the last part.

  “Yeah, see, that’s not the way to make me stop worrying.”

  Rachel turned away, her fingers fumbling with the knot on her apron. When she got it undone, she set it on the counter, ignoring the thin circle of flour she’d been rolling the dough through. She braced her hands on the counter and leaned on the end of the island so she was only a foot away from Ashe. “Last chance. I’m telling you, once you know this … well, it’s going to change things.”

  Ashe stared at her. “I can take it.”

  “Fine. I found my brother,” she said.

  “What? Seriously? No wonder you’ve been so distracted.” He covered her hands with his, curling his fingers around her wrists and rubbing the soft skin at the base
of her palms. “How? Where is he?”

  Rachel fisted her hands under his, and he pulled away. “He’s in Nowhere. But he doesn’t remember me. He doesn’t even remember his name, who he really is.”

  Leaning forward on his elbows, Ashe drew his eyebrows together, studying her. “What do you mean?”

  “Somehow when he disappeared, he ended up here. A family took him in and raised him like he was their own. And no one knows except Catch.”

  “I’m sure you’ve noticed that Nowhere is a pretty small town. How would people here not notice that a family suddenly had a young son they didn’t have before?” His voice dropped, the pity in his words making it soft and cautious. “Even with Catch’s help, I don’t see how everyone would forget that.”

  “I don’t know how it happened, but it did,” she said. She pushed back from the counter. Her palms left sweat marks along the edge. “Something about how he arrived in Nowhere altered people’s memories, altered your memories so you think he’s always been here.”

  Ashe stood, the stool scraping along the floor as he moved it out of his way. His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “Wait, what are you saying? Do I know your brother?”

  She picked at a spot of dried dough on the counter, then looked up to meet his gaze. “It’s Scott.” Her voice came out stronger than she’d expected.

  “No.”

  “I know it’s hard to believe—”

  “That’s because it’s not true,” Ashe said. He crossed his arms over his chest and shifted his weight so he leaned slightly away from her. His jaw tightened, pulling his face taut. “I’m sorry about what happened to your brother, and I get that you want him back. But Scott’s not him. You’re seeing something that’s not there because you want it to be true.”

  Rachel wanted to yell at him, to tell him he was wrong and he’d see the truth if he’d just open his damn eyes, but she held it all back. She wouldn’t want to accept it either if the roles were reversed. Her throat ached from the restraint. “Do you really think I wanted to find him this way? That I’d want to tell you or Scott that this isn’t the life he was supposed to have?”